by Frances Vick
‘“You are important… you don’t have to buy love by being useful or kind”,’ Freddie quoted, closing his eyes. ‘Look, I’ll be your chaperone if you want. He really wouldn’t thank me for it, but if it’ll make you invite him, so be it.’
‘Oh God, Fred this is all so silly. I shouldn’t need you to hold my hand. I sort of do though. Do you mind?’
‘Holding your hand? Well, I’m not going to lie, you could do with a manicure—’
She punched him lightly. ‘No! I mean being here with David.’
‘Of course I don’t mind. But put up some pictures, please? It looks like a rehab clinic or something. And by the way, where is the TV?’
‘Um…’
‘Jesus Jen, you didn’t—’
She nodded shamefaced ‘I caved. Kathleen called and banged on and on about how Maraid needed the TV and why was I so selfish and…’ She shrugged.
‘So the blog post was a lie then?’
‘No, when I posted it I was really sure of myself, but then…’
‘They got to you?’
‘Mm.’
Freddie shook his head. ‘You can’t let people walk all over you, Jen.’
‘I know,’ she muttered. ‘I just… I have a bit of an Achilles heel when it comes to family.’ She looked up. ‘Is that the right phrase? Achilles heel?’
‘You know it’s the right phrase. Don’t make out you’re this ignoramus,’ Freddie said testily. ‘Don’t… undervalue yourself like that.’ He took her hand. ‘For Christ’s sake Jen, if you could just believe in yourself more, just be a bit more like you are in the blog… if you managed that you’d be unstoppable.’
‘You think?’
‘I know. In the meantime, we’ll start with making this place look like you actually live here. Then, when you invite David over, he won’t think he’s in a halfway house for ex cycling junkies.’ He sneered at a copy of Cycling World. ‘Look at this – “You need 600mm ERD, built 32x2 onto a hub with flanges of 60mm from the hub centreline”. It’s like Sanskrit.’
And so they spent the next hour going through Jenny’s belongings, consisting of holiday photographs, a few mass-produced prints – the obligatory Klimt, Hokusai’s Wave.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have a photo of your mum?’ Freddie asked gently.
‘There aren’t any. Marc trashed them all. He threw them all out when we left. The only one I have is this one.’ Young Sal sitting on a striped towel, squinting into the sun. Jenny – about six years old – squatted next to her, her small face punctured, almost obliterated.
‘What happened? How come it’s got a hole in it?’ Freddie asked.
‘The night, she, you know. She pushed me into it, and my head must have caught it. It smashed, and then she trod on it.’
‘Jesus, Jen,’ Freddie said softly. ‘She hit you?’
‘No. Not hit. More of a sideswipe. She didn’t know what she was doing.’ Jenny’s voice was low, her face averted. ‘That’s where the glass went through it.’ When she touched the edge of the photo, her fingers made it tremble. She smiled. ‘I remember that day. I fell off a donkey and cried so much that Mum bought me a stick of candyfloss to cheer me up, and so did Kathleen and her boyfriend and a few other people, and I ended up being sick on the bus home.’ One finger gently caressed her own younger face.
‘I feel awful now,’ Freddie said. ‘I didn’t know she… hit you. I saw the bruise, too, and I didn’t even…’ He shook his head at himself. ‘If I’d known that she’d hit you, there’s no way I’d have told you to get it framed.’
‘No – you know what? I’m glad you did.’ She raised her head. ‘It’s important to remember the good times, isn’t it? She wasn’t always like that. She…’ She looked down at her hands, swallowed hard. I should get it framed again. It’s all I have left of her, isn’t it?’
‘I bet I can get it repaired.’ Freddie pocketed the picture. ‘Let me see if I can. And I’ll get it framed too. ‘You’re right. It’s… it’s important to remember things, good things. It’s your history.’
‘It is.’ She nodded.
‘Does David know about – any of that stuff? The refuge? Marc?’ Freddie asked gently.
‘No. God, no!’ She shook her head vehemently. ‘I don’t want him to either. I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me.’
Freddie closed his eyes and quoted: ‘“You deserve a space in the world. You can come first”.’ He took her hand. ‘Does he even know about the blog?’ Again, she shook her head. ‘Why not?’
‘It’s… I don’t know why not. It’s complicated. I… Don’t tell him, Fred?’
‘No, of course I won’t, but, Jen, why not? It’s something to be proud of. Your whole history is something to be proud of! You survived when lots of other people wouldn’t have. I sure as hell wouldn’t have. David seems lovely, so maybe try to… let him in more. Trust him. What you wrote a few months ago? About making your own family? You were right about that.’
‘You think?’
‘I know. You know it too. You’re so... loved, Jen. You are!’
18
A week later and Jenny stood by the work surface, her eyes pink with onion tears, hair escaping her ponytail. David and Freddie would be at the flat in half an hour.
As she cooked, she hummed tunelessly to herself, then, with ten minutes to spare, she ran to the bathroom, patted some make-up on and struggled into a slightly wrinkled dress. Then she watched her reflection widen its eyes, biting its lips, until the doorbell rang. The wide-angled view through the spyhole showed David and Freddie standing together, a little awkwardly, on the doorstep. David held flowers. Freddie held a bottle of wine. She counted to three and opened the door.
When David saw her, he radiated pleasure.
‘You look lovely!’
‘Thanks. This is my posh dress.’ She accepted a kiss from Freddie, and shifted sideways to allow them to come into the dim, narrow corridor and then into the too-bright kitchen.
‘This is very nice.’ David looked around amiably.
‘Oh, it’s a bit bare,’ Jenny apologised. ‘Matt doesn’t really go for a lot of decoration. I’ve managed to make my room look a bit more lived-in though.’
‘Matt?’ While David’s smile remained, his forehead creased.
‘My flatmate?’
‘You didn’t mention that you had a flatmate.’ His smile flattened.
‘Oh, didn’t I? Sorry. He works shifts, so we barely see each other.’ There was a pause. ‘Anyway, come this way for the grand tour!’ It took less than three minutes to wander through the small flat. ‘And this is my room.’
‘That’s a lovely picture.’ David pointed at the wall above her bed where she’d put up a photograph of herself. ‘Where was it taken?’ He looked at her and smiled.
‘Turkey.’ Jenny smiled back. Something seemed to pass between them. ‘That was in Marmaris, wasn’t it? Fred?’
‘What?’ Freddie seemed distracted. ‘Oh, yes. Yes. You’d just bought that sarong from that pushy man on the beach, remember?’ As he peered at the photo, a thought darted into his mind, snagged, twitched.
‘We went all over the place, didn’t we Fred? We almost ended up crossing the border into Syria by mistake. That could have been disastrous. And we nearly got arrested for illegally camping in that butterfly valley – wasn’t it a protected area or something, Fred?’
‘What? Oh, yes, yes.’ Freddie dragged his confused gaze away from the picture. ‘We only got away with it because that fat police guy fancied you. Lucky.’ He turned to David. ‘You’ve seen Papillon, right? If she hadn’t flirted with the him, we’d be in solitary somewhere, eating bugs.’
There was a silence. David, still smiling, said: ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand the reference.’
‘Oh what? Papillon! Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman? Great film. Easily one of the best Steve-McQueen-fails-to-escape movies.’ Freddie beamed.
‘I’ll be sure to look out for it,’ David said politely.
There was a pause.
‘Well, that’s the end of the tour.’ Jenny led them all back to the living room. ‘I just need to poke about in the kitchen; drinks are on the table though, if you want one? I’ll just be a minute.’
Left alone, Freddie waggled a bottle at David. ‘Start on the best and work down to the cheap?’
‘Mmm.’ David stood irresolutely, one hand fiddling with the back of a dining chair. ‘So, Matt, is it? And what is it he does again?’
‘I think he’s a nurse.’ Freddie struggled with the bottle opener. ‘I’m terrible at this.’
‘Let me.’ David took the bottle off him. ‘So Matt isn’t often here then?’
‘No, not much I don’t think. I’ve only met him once or twice.’
‘So he’s not a close friend of Jenny’s then?’ David persisted. He pulled out the cork with a grunt of effort.
‘No. She answered an advert in Loot. Thanks.’ Freddie accepted a glass. ‘Cheers. I wanted her to move in with me, but the timing was all wrong, and she says it’s too far away from Cheryl. Her therapist? I hope she’ll change her mind though. I mean,’ Freddie glanced at the closed kitchen door and lowered his voice, ‘it’s OK here and everything, but it’s not, you know, homely. And it’s not cheap either. She would have got mates rates from me.’
David frowned again. ‘It must be a bit… difficult to live with a stranger. A male stranger. A single girl. It’s a bit—’
‘Oh, Jenny’s lived with loads of people, don’t worry about her!’ He registered David’s expression, and rushed to explain. ‘I mean, she’s always lived in shared houses, with men and women, and she’s very good at looking after herself – boundaries, all that. And Matt is very nice and tidy. He has a girlfriend that he spends a lot of time with too.’ He stopped then, aware that he had furiously back-pedalled himself into a blatant lie; he had no idea if Matt had a girlfriend or not. Shit. ‘Anyway, living alone is sort of horrible. Have you ever done it?’ he asked, as Jenny came back.
‘Yes, but I never really enjoyed it. I can’t relax in a house by myself.’
Jenny nodded. ‘I’ve only done it a few times, like when I was staying at Freddie’s parents’ when they were on the cruise. I had to leave the downstairs lights on every night.’ She laughed and shook her head. ‘Don’t tell Ruth!’ she told Freddie. ‘I’m not cut out for living alone. So, even though me and Matt don’t see a lot of each other, it’s nice to know that there’s someone in the room next door, you know?’
After a pause, David said: ‘When I moved back to the village, I couldn’t get over how quiet everything was. Where I’d lived before – it was always quite noisy, even at night, but suddenly I was in a house where I could hear everything. It’s probably worse in a big house, magnified…Things rattle, doors slam. To be honest I’ve more or less shut the top floor of the house off. I sleep in what used to be the study next to the sitting room.’ He smiled. ‘You Can’t Go Home Again.’
‘Ah! So you’ve finally pierced her facade! You know she’s really a blogging superstar!’ Freddie grinned.
‘I took a look at it today,’ David said. ‘When I had a moment.’ It was a strange, ambiguous phrase. Elderly. His face expressed absolutely nothing.
‘I ’fessed up the other day,’ Jenny told Freddie, then turned back to David. ‘But, you know, I started it on a bit of a whim, and I just jot down ideas every now and again. And it’s more for the course than, you know, for me.’
‘Bollocks!’ Freddie told her. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw David flinch. ‘It’s not just for the course, not any more. It’s brilliant. It’s practically a public service. Don’t put it down like that!’
David winced again, ever so slightly. After a small pause, he said: ‘It is a great achievement. But I wonder, does it make you feel a bit… exposed? People knowing everything about you like that, being able to… reach into your life and do what they want. I’ve read about… what are they called? Trolls?’
‘Well, that’s why she keeps it anonymised,’ Freddie said quickly. ‘And people are very nice. She gets a lot of lovely messages and stuff. Support. Don’t you, Jen?’
‘Well, not always,’ Jenny admitted. ‘I had some pretty nasty comments a while ago. That was difficult.’
‘What kind of comments?’ David asked.
‘Well, when you write about death, or any kind of trauma, it’s powerful stuff. It can really affect people. I think some people reacted without thinking, and there was a bit of a row in the comments section, that’s all. It kind of blew up and then blew away, thankfully.’
David nodded sagely. ‘These were the comments after your mother’s… passing?’
David’s speech was flecked with those sort of antiquated phrases – ‘When I had a moment’; ‘Mother’s passing’. It was as if he’d been cryogenically frozen for the past fifty years or so, and was only just now thawing out. Strange. Irritatingly strange, because Freddie really wanted David to be perfect for Jenny.
‘It was pretty awful while it lasted, wasn’t it, Jen?’ Freddie said. ‘A real grimy window into humanity. But Jenny handled it brilliantly, I thought. Didn’t dignify anything with a response.’
‘“Grimy window into humanity”. That’s a good phrase, Fred, I’m stealing that one,’ Jenny said. ‘But yeah. It was… unnerving.’
David coughed. ‘I suppose I don’t have that… talent. To be that open with people I don’t know well. It’s definitely something I need to work on. I think, if I’d been in your position, Freddie, seeing the kind of things that were being written, I wouldn’t have been able to resist posting a few replies myself. But that’s me. I have an—’ He closed his eyes. ‘“Enlarged sense of justice”.’ He opened them, smiled. ‘Someone told me that once, and I still can’t really understand why it’s a bad thing?’
Freddie gazed at him. Was that a dig? Did he think he should have weighed in to the argument? Defended Jenny? Should he have?
‘Anyway, it’s all over with now.’ Jenny was smiling, but her voice was firm. ‘You have to be a grown-up about these things. Live and learn and all that.’
There was a brief, not too comfortable, silence.
‘And on that note – the past and all that,’ Freddie reached for his coat. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ From out of his pocket, he produced a brown paper oblong. ‘Here.’
‘Oh Fred.’ She smiled. ‘I know what this is.’ The paper ripped, and Jenny’s repaired toddler face stared up from her lap.
‘They did the best they could with the hole.’ Freddie said. ‘There’s still a bit of a tear, but there you are, in all your chubby glory.’
‘Oh Fred, thanks. That’s really… special. It’s lovely. Come here!’ And she hugged him hard. ‘This is the only photo I have of me and Mum together.’ She wiped her eyes, handed it to David. ‘And Freddie got it fixed for me!’
David held the frame between finger and thumb – as if it were a strange insect, or a fragment of an obscene letter – and his ever-ready smile faded, faded into something unreadable. ‘But I don’t understand. Why don’t you have any other photographs?’
‘Oh.’ Jenny made a dismissive gesture. ‘Long story. Dull.’ She reached for the picture.
‘No, really, why?’ David was insistent. His soft eyes seemed aggrieved, offended, and he didn’t give the picture back.
‘Well, my mum was in an abusive relationship, and when we left him, he destroyed them all. Nearly all of them anyway. There might have been more that Mum threw out.’ Jenny shrugged. Freddie looked at her anxiously, trying to catch her eye, but couldn’t.
‘I don’t understand that either. Why would she have done that?’ David asked, frowning.
Jenny shrugged. ‘I don’t know if she did, she just might have. She-she’d do things like that sometimes. I don’t know.’
David’s voice hardened just a little. ‘But why? They were your photos too. They belonged to you. They were precious. Didn’t she think of that?’
Jenny gazed at him. ‘Well, like I said there might not have been any more photos. I don’t know. All this happened a long time ago, it doesn’t matter—’
‘It does matter though,’ David muttered. ‘You only have this photo? That’s all you have?’
‘Well, yes,’ Jenny answered after a pause. Finally, she looked over David’s head and met Freddie’s eyes. Her expression said: Help!
‘At least it’s a nice photo!’ Freddie said, with forced jollity. ‘My parents have shitloads of photos of me, and I hate every single one of them.’
David frowned sorrowfully. ‘I just… I would’ve thought…’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Things like that really… get to me. Other people deciding things for you, taking things from you.’
‘I think sometimes parents don’t really understand how precious things like photos are for their kids,’ Jenny said carefully. ‘But maybe it’s more careless than callous?’
David sighed, and the anger that had crept into his face crept back out. ‘You’re right. Yes. It needn’t be a… cruel thing. It’s a pity though. Sorry.’ He handed the picture back. ‘When you’re a child, you need to feel safe and… respected. If that doesn’t happen, you have double the work when you’re an adult.’
‘Absolutely! And that’s the kind of thing I’m blogging about,’ Jenny said eagerly. ‘I really think we have to learn to value ourselves, nurture ourselves, you know? Without thinking it’s selfish, or wrong.’
‘I agree. But shouldn’t nurture come from someone else? We’re pack animals, aren’t we?’ There was something wolfish about David’s smile now. ‘We make more sense working as a unit than alone. That’s why I think living alone isn’t natural, or, you know, living with a stranger just to split the rent. It’s not how we’re meant to be.’
‘You see, I agree with you,’ Jenny said, ‘but all my life I’ve tried to go the opposite way, even though I don’t like it.’ She shook her head. ‘I want to be Oh So Independent.’
‘And if you admit that you don’t like it, it feels a bit pathetic,’ David said. ‘Society tells you to go against your nature, so you spend years chasing an ideal that you don’t even want, while passing up what you really need.’
